Management Development as Public Policy: Australia's Frontline Management Initiative (FMI) 1995–2002

Anne Rozario and Ian Hampson

The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2007, vol. 17, issue 2, 107-128

Abstract: This is one of few empirical studies of the implementation of the Frontline Management Initiative. It is based on qualitative research in six Australian organizations. Arising from a 1990s policy view, represented by the Karpin Report, that Australia's competitive weakness was partly an outcome of poor management capabilities, the FMI was introduced in order to train first-line supervisors, who were seen as key in changing work practices. The FMI, however, suffered from the weaknesses in competence-based training (CBT), exacerbated by problems in the Australian National Training Framework. Lack of uniformity in curricula and standards, coupled with a fuzziness in defining frontline management, undermined this exercise in management development as public policy. Narrowly-specified outcomes did not deliver the claimed ease of assessment but undermined content. More fundamentally, ‘unitarist’ assumptions such as those underpinning the FMI are based on an inadequate understanding of workplace learning. Even the highly structured CBT approach cannot prevent learners from exploring their own interests and affirming their own counter- identity, in ways that may run counter to enterprise productivity.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/103530460701700207 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:17:y:2007:i:2:p:107-128

DOI: 10.1177/103530460701700207

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Economic and Labour Relations Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().